Elliot, Sandra

ORAL HISTORY OF SANDRA ELLIOT
Interviewed by Keith McDaniel
October 9, 2013
MR. MCDANIEL: This is Keith McDaniel and today is October 9, 2013, and I am at the home of Sandra Elliot here in Oliver Springs, just outside Oak Ridge. Mrs. Elliot, thank you for taking time to talk with me.
MRS. ELLIOT: Thank you for inviting me.
MR. MCDANIEL: Let's start at the beginning. Tell me where you were born and raised, something about your family.
MRS. ELLIOT: I was born in Cookeville, Tennessee, in what is now, or was at one time, the city library. When I was growing up, it was the city library so it was kind of neat to go check out books where I was born and to get to wander through the stacks. I grew up on a farm in Middle Tennessee that's been in our family since 1830. Was part of a Revolutionary War land grant and we still own a piece of it. So we... I spent a lot of time there. It was a wonderful, wonderful absolutely the best growing up period because I had a playhouse in the pine thicket, I had a playhouse in the barn, we played in apple trees -- had a great time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, did you have brothers and sisters?
MRS. ELLIOT: I have an older sister.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: She's three years older and there were just the two of us and we were the only two grandchildren, so we were just a little bit on the spoiled side. (laughter) Now, let me just say this, growing up on a farm, my dad was of that generation that little girls didn't do heavy work, so we weren't allowed to, like, do the hay bales and that sort of thing, but we could get up in the hay loft and move them around and make playhouses, so... (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Of course, of course. Now, was your dad a full time farmer?
MRS. ELLIOT: He was a teacher. In fact, he was Biology Teacher of the Year in the 1960s for the discovery of dinosaur bones with some of his students.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MRS. ELLIOT: It was always exciting at my house. We never knew... My dad was a character. We never knew what was going to be going on in the summer so that one summer we had archeologists from -- the Smithsonian was busy that summer with a project out West so they sent the Carnegie Institute. So, for a whole summer, archeologists from the Carnegie Institute lived in my back yard and I saw them come home every day with truckloads of dinosaur bones packed in plaster. So, to see...
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? Where did they discover the dinosaur bones?
MRS. ELLIOT: It was in a cave there in Overton County. It was an unexplored cave, and Daddy did a lot of work with the Game and Fish Commission and the state in the summers. And he and his students had their own little grotto, as they called it, their little club, and they found a cave that had not been explored that much and they went into it and nobody, I guess, in millions of years, thousands of years had been down as far as they went into the cave and they found those bones and immediately started calling and recognized that we found something.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, what year was this, about?
MRS. ELLIOT: That was in 1960 or '61, somewhere along there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, has that location kind of become prestigious or famous or...?
MRS. ELLIOT: As a matter of fact, it has not. It's still on a farm. Very few people still know about it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is it your farm?
MRS. ELLIOT: It's not our farm.
MR. MCDANIEL: But it's still on somebody's farm.
MRS. ELLIOT: Mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm. It's still there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MRS. ELLIOT: And our family still occasionally gets into the cave, those of us that are still able. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: Some of us are not able! (laughter)
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, that's amazing. So you were exposed ... you were exposed not only to farm life but to education because your father was a teacher.
MRS. ELLIOT: Yes. One summer we -- don't know if I need to tell this one or not but it was legitimate. One summer, we grew pot for the Sheriff's Department. It was back when they were starting up with the pot initiative and so the local sheriff asked my dad, you know, said, "Would you be willing to grow pot and let us photograph it at different stages of development so the officers can learn to recognize it." So we grew pot one summer. (laughter)
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, there you go.
MRS. ELLIOT: We collected bats for bat research one summer. Or not for bat research but for rabies research one summer so yeah, we were ... we were busy.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, that's pretty interesting. So where did you go to high school?
MRS. ELLIOT: I went to high school at Rickman. Rickman was a 12 year school. I started there in 1954 and graduated there in 1965. Didn't have to change schools so elementary to middle school was, you just went to the next hallway. And same thing to high school. Although there was a very distinct division. You didn't, unless you were in junior high, middle or whatever, go in that hallway.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly. Now, how big was the school, I mean, how many was your graduating class?
MRS. ELLIOT: 39.
MR. MCDANIEL: 39.
MRS. ELLIOT: And that was the largest class to date.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MRS. ELLIOT: When I graduated in 1965. The school closed in 1985. It consolidated in with a larger school.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. And that was in...Overton County?
MRS. ELLIOT: That was in Overton County.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok. All right. Now Overton County, Cookeville's not in Overton County, is it?
MRS. ELLIOT: Cookeville's in Putnam County.
MR. MCDANIEL: That's right. And Overton County's just north...
MRS. ELLIOT: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: ... of Putnam County.
MRS. ELLIOT: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you graduated, (coughs) excuse me... So you graduated school and you went to college, I imagine.
MRS. ELLIOT: Went for one year, met my husband, and we got married and moved to Arkansas and I dropped out for a couple of years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, where'd you go for that one year?
MRS. ELLIOT: We went to Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
MR. MCDANIEL: No, I meant where did you go to college?
MRS. ELLIOT: Oh, where'd I go... I went to Tennessee Tech.
MR. MCDANIEL: Went to Tennessee Tech.
MRS. ELLIOT: Went to Tennessee Tech in Cookeville.
MR. MCDANIEL: And did you meet him at Tennessee Tech?
MRS. ELLIOT: We met in the swimming pool at Tennessee Tech. (laughs) I was swimming around with some friends and somebody poured cold water on my head -- ice cold water, I might add -- and I looked up and it was my husband with a toy boat full of cold water. So that's how we met.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok. And then you got married and you said you moved to Pine Bluff.
MRS. ELLIOT: We moved to Pine Bluff. We were there for a year, then came back to Nashville so that he could go to school in Nashville. And I still had the idea that, I'm going to go to school. Now, I wanted to go to school, take some classes, in Pine Bluff but the only school there was the A&M school and at that time the school's colleges were still segregated.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. ELLIOT: At least they were there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Uh-huh. Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: And I probably could have pushed and gone but that was during, that was in 1966.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, that was a tough time.
MRS. ELLIOT: That was a tough time and you just didn't rock any boats at that time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. And especially in Arkansas.
MRS. ELLIOT: Especially in Arkansas. We lived in Nashville when Martin Luther King was assassinated and those were tough times, too.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really?
MRS. ELLIOT: Mmm-hmm. We had curfews. Curfew was at 7 o'clock... 7 p.m. and because we were quite poor at that time, with my husband in school and I wasn't working, we had one car and it was a struggle. We also had a baby by this time and it was a struggle for him to get home and to get to the grocery store, but you didn't dare go out after 7 o'clock. You just didn't.
MR. MCDANIEL: Just a quick aside: You mentioned that you were living in Nashville. Interviewed a lady that taught at Linden Elementary School for years and years and years. She told me the story about, back then, the kids would go everywhere on field trips, you know, it was nothing from them to go, excuse me, nothing for them to go to Nashville. And, as a matter of fact, they were on their way back from a field trip to Nashville the day Martin Luther King was killed and it was getting kind of late in the day and, of course, this was before cell phones and, you know, they didn't know anything about it until they got to the school and there were a bunch of worried parents about it, because they didn't know what was going to happen.
MRS. ELLIOT: Absolutely. And Nashville was locked down and as intense, almost as Memphis was.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, Nashville was... there was a lot of racial strife in Nashville.
MRS. ELLIOT: Absolutely. It was very tense times and so, to come from Pine Bluff, Arkansas and see the racial times that were there, it was totally different. And where I had grown up in Overton County, we just didn't have any of those situations. And my husband had to keep reminding me in Pine Bluff, he kept reminding me that, "You can't ... you can't do that." And, believe it or not, the stores still had segregated registers when we lived in Pine Bluff.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MRS. ELLIOT: I started to get in the short line one day and my husband pulled me by the shirt and said, "You can't get in that line." And I said, "Why not? It's shorter than this one." And he said, "You can't do that." And, I don't play those games. I don't care about that and he pulled me back and he said, "Honey, it's just not safe right now. You can't be the little Overton County girl down here, regardless of your beliefs, you just can't do that. It's not safe."
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. So you were in Nashville. Your husband was going to school. So, what next?
MRS. ELLIOT: We moved back to the farm.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: My grandparents' house was vacant on the farm and we did some remodeling on the house, moved back to the farm. My husband worked for just a short time in Cookeville and I started to Tennessee Tech. By this time we had two babies, ok. So, I go back to school to finish my last three years with two babies. Can't tell you how many times that I spent lying on my tummy on the floor with two kids bouncing, playing horsy on my back and I'm studying chemistry,
MR. MCDANIEL: Of course, of course.
MRS. ELLIOT: Ok. So, that was... (laughs) He worked in Cookeville for a year and then was able to get on here in Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: What did he study in school?
MRS. ELLIOT: He was a machinist.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MRS. ELLIOT: Tool and die maker machinist.
MR. MCDANIEL: (coughs) Excuse me. I've had horrible allergies this year. Excuse me. Oh, so he was a machinist.
MRS. ELLIOT: Mmm-hmmm.
MR. MCDANIEL: And I imagine when he came to Oak Ridge he went to work at Y-12.
MRS. ELLIOT: He went to work at Y-12.
MR. MCDANIEL: What year was that?
MRS. ELLIOT: That was in either the fall of 1969 or the fall of 1970. I believe 1970, yeah, it was '70 because I started back to school in '69 and he was there for a year.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. ELLIOT: So from... He moved over here in 1970 and I stayed there because we had established babysitter.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: And I had family there that, if...
MR. MCDANIEL: If you needed help.
MRS. ELLIOT: If I needed help. So he came over here and he would come home on weekends. So we lived like that until, for a couple of years and that kind of changed the dynamics of the family.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: I think from that point on, the kids learned that Mama has the final say-so and, you know, even on until this day, if the kids call about some decision, and my husband answers the phone, they're ultimately going to ask to speak to me.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, of course.
MRS. ELLIOT: That just changed the family dynamics.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, that's just the way things are supposed to be. It's the way it is at my house.
MRS. ELLIOT: Well, if Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. (laughter) So maybe it was that and not just the...
MR. MCDANIEL: Except the other night, my 15-year-old, because he knew -- he was asking to do something. His mother had already told him, "No," and I knew that. "Well, Daddy," he says, "You can override her." I said, "I could, but do I want to?" I said, "I don't know that I want to do that." (laughter) "Well," he said, "She's not here. You can make that decision." I said, "Well, that is true, but I don't think I want to do that."
MRS. ELLIOT: There you go.
MR. MCDANIEL: So I certainly understand that. And I'm sure you probably felt, that probably made you feel fairly independent, too. Or at least, you know...
MRS. ELLIOT: I don't think I had time to really become that independent because trying to keep the house going and two kids and go to school full time. I was in school full time. I mean, one semester -- well, we were quarters at that time -- I took 21 hours and that was a load, let me tell you. I didn't really have time to do that much.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. But your husband, he liked his job at Y-12.
MRS. ELLIOT: He liked it. He stayed there for ... well, he retired from Y-12.
MR. MCDANIEL: Did he? So, you finished school.
MRS. ELLIOT: Finished school. Finished school in 1972 and coming over here, we were... By that time we had two vehicles, and driving over, we were almost like two little kids. We were on the interstate and I can remember for a minute or two, I would drive up even and my husband would be over there and wave. I mean, we were almost giddy. And for the first year, because my son was four and my daughter was going to start to kindergarten, and I had been so involved, I decided to not work that first year.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MRS. ELLIOT: But, I took my son to -- decided to put him in nursery school for a couple of days a week, because my daughter was in kindergarten and wandered in to Oak Ridge Nursery School sometime after the first of the year.
MR. MCDANIEL: And where was the nursery school?
MRS. ELLIOT: Oak Ridge Nursery School?
MR. MCDANIEL: At that time.
MRS. ELLIOT: It was at the same place that it is now. It's always been at 155... I mean 151 Robertsville Road.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right? Ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: I believe that's the address: 151 Robertsville Road.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MRS. ELLIOT: It's always been, since it was built back in the 1940s and that's the original building there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Let me ask you, before we get into the nursery school, now, where did you all live in Oak Ridge? Was your husband already... Did he already have a place?
MRS. ELLIOT: No, he was in a little, tiny little apartment type thing. We lived in one of the duplexes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, did you?
MRS. ELLIOT: Yeah. In the Highland View area but don't ask me the address, but it was in the Highland View area. And my daughter went to kindergarten at Highland View. And, as I said, my son was in nursery school, and I applied... I was always going to be a dietitian, ok. That was what my focus was in school.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, you're interested in that. You grew up on a farm, you knew about, you know, plants and foods and what was good for you and what wasn't good for you.
MRS. ELLIOT: I was going to be a therapeutic dietitian and, at that time, there was... you could work under, of course, with having two children, I couldn't go to the internship in Atlanta or Nashville, which was the closest places, but you could do an internship sort of thing by working under a registered dietitian in the hospital. So I got hired by Oak Ridge Hospital to work as kind of a dietitian assistant, I guess.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MRS. ELLIOT: But would, ultimately, be able to get my license.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: And my son had to have surgery. So I called them and I said, "Look, his surgery's going to be fairly serious. I'm not going to be able to take this job, after all." Because they wanted some evening work and that sort of thing. "I'm just not going to be able to do this right now, thank you for the opportunity." And, Oak Ridge Nursery School said, "Would you like to substitute?" (laughs) So I substituted the rest of that year.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok. So you... So this... What year was that? '72?
MRS. ELLIOT: That was in '72.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: Started to... I had cancer that summer of '73.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, you did?
MRS. ELLIOT: Had pretty serious cancer and wound up having pretty serious treatment.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. ELLIOT: And this was before chemo, so the treatments were pretty radical at that time, pretty damaging. And I was pretty young and a little bit scared, but not as much... You know, somehow, when you're in your early 20s you just don't think, "I'm going to die."
MR. MCDANIEL: You don't think about that.
MRS. ELLIOT: No, you don't. Even though they're telling you. Probably at 2 o'clock in the morning I would wake up and think, "Oh, my..." you know, "I could die." But the rest of the time I was, you know, could push that to the side. So, when it came time in the fall, they had offered me a position. And the doctor said, 'Well, you're really not able to go to work and carry a work load and have children,' you know manage your children, 'and your home and all that. But, I guess, if you promise faithfully that you'll have someone in to clean your house and help you do some things, take that pay you're going to get and pay somebody to do some of your other things, I guess we can go ahead and release you to work.
MR. MCDANIEL: That's amazing that the doctor would talk about that. You wouldn't think a doctor today would even ...
MRS. ELLIOT: Would even think about that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Would even think about that, you know.
MRS. ELLIOT: But my doctor was Dr. Diddle, he was in Knoxville and he became almost like a grandfather to me.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MRS. ELLIOT: The first day we went in to see him, they had -- the doctor that referred me was from Oak Ridge and had referred me to the doctor in Knoxville and he said, you know, your husband needs to take off from work, this is serious, he needs to go with you and he needs to be there and hear everything because you may or may not. Well, that wasn't Dr. Diddle's way.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: Dr. Diddle, when my husband... They called me back and my husband went back and he looked, the doctor looked up and he said, "I don't want you back here right now." And my husband said, "Well, I'm going to stay." And he said, "Well you sit down over there and don't you say a word because I'm talking to her." And I thought, "I don't like him." (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MRS. ELLIOT: (laughing) I don't like him. But, you know, before it was over, he would come in and he'd pat -- when I was in the hospital -- he'd come in and he'd pat me on the hand, you know, "How you doing today?" and he almost became like a grandfather because he was older than my father. He was close to retirement age at that time and, they said, the best.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: But I came to just absolutely love the man, but he was crusty! (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: He probably didn't like it when doctors talked to the husband about the wives in front of the wives? Maybe that was an over... that was kind of a reaction to that.
MRS. ELLIOT: Possibly so, but, you know, I thought at the time, because I was kind of -- when they told me I actually had cancer, for the first 24 hours I was kind of Bzzzt!
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: You know. My brain was numb and I think my husband recognized that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MRS. ELLIOT: And wasn't sure if I'd be able to continue.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, yeah, yeah.
MRS. ELLIOT: But, you know, Dr. Diddle, that didn't faze him. He wanted to talk to me and me only.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. My goodness. So, you go through your treatment and, I guess you... obviously, you go into remission or it's gone or...
MRS. ELLIOT: It was completely... It was completely gone, removed. No surgery, but all radiation treatments. And so, everything was, I guess, nuked. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: How long did it take? How long did you have radiation treatments?
MRS. ELLIOT: I had 35 cobalt treatments and then a week of radium implant. The radium implant was Monday morning to Friday night which was pretty... pretty intense.
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: And the whole time... And I was in a research project, so that was cutting edge at the time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see. Right, right, exactly.
MRS. ELLIOT: And everybody here kept telling me... because at that time in Oak Ridge they were doing some pretty radical stuff on ... on extreme.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly. Yeah.
MRS. ELLIOT: So I had people telling me that, "Oh, if you go to that place in Oak Ridge they'll bury you in this hole in the ground and do something." And I thought, "Oh, my!" you know, "Is that going to happen to me?" (laughs) Because I was young enough and naive enough, I didn't...
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MRS. ELLIOT: I didn't have a clue what was coming.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, my. Yeah, that was about the time that they were... That ORINS [Oak Ridge Institute for Nuclear Science] was doing all of... a lot of their research and such as that.
MRS. ELLIOT: Yes. And acquaintances, friends and acquaintances... We were youth leaders at the church at the time, so those youth kids didn't think anything about telling me about 'Aunt Susie' that had had this or that radical treatment and, you know, she didn't live! (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: You know, that's the thing about... I've interviewed several people, several physicians that worked at ORINS and other people, pathologists and things such as that, and I mean, you know, you didn't get sent there unless there was just about no hope for you.
MRS. ELLIOT: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: I mean, that was the thing.
MRS. ELLIOT: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: So you should feel good that you didn't... If I got sent there, I'd have been worried.
MRS. ELLIOT: I didn't, but I didn't really know at the time that it was... 'cause we hadn't lived here that long.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, yeah, sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: And I didn't know anything about it and the only place for treatment at that time was at UT hospital.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, was it?
MRS. ELLIOT: So, I would go to UT hospital and you went in the front door and you went down into the basement. And my ... my recollection of their, of the offices there, they had the cast-off furniture. Part of it... The waiting room was a hallway, you sat there lined up, and I think it was even grey, either grey or beige, and, you know, I've often thought I'd like to have pictures and see that again, it probably wasn't nearly as dour.
MR. MCDANIEL: Probably wasn't nearly... I don't know, it probably was. Probably that industrial green color or some of it, the floors were.
MRS. ELLIOT: I think in those days if you were a cancer patient there wasn't much point in putting too much into your environment because you were going to die anyway. (laughs) That's just kind of the way it was.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now... So, but you recovered. How long did your body take to really get back to normal?
MRS. ELLIOT: Well, they told me when I started the treatments that it would take 20 years for all the scars to develop.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. ELLIOT: So through... This was in ... so through the 1970s and well into the 1980s, I wound up in the hospital about once a year, so that they could do some tests and would sometimes stay as much as a week. Now they do most of that testing outpatient but at that time you went in the hospital for it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. You still go in and do...?
MRS. ELLIOT: I would have to go in, that's just was the way it was. My husband was my mentor...he was my guardian, I guess. He would say, "Now, you're burning the candle at both ends. You're running... you're doing too much. You're going to wind up sick, you're going to wind up in the hospital." And the doctors had told me, Dr. Diddle and Dr. Komas were -- one was one doctor and one was the other -- and they had told me that, you know, for somebody in their early 20s, you're going to have to learn to live like somebody much older.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MRS. ELLIOT: Because your immune system is not going to be as good, you're not going to have the energy, you're going to have this, that and the other, so you're going to have to learn to pace yourself like older people do.
MR. MCDANIEL: So did you?
MRS. ELLIOT: Well, it took many hospitalizations before I learned to pace. Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: So when did you go back to working at the nursery school?
MRS. ELLIOT: Well, I had not started to work at that time. That was in the summer of '73 and I'd subbed in the fall of '72 and '73, so there was a position that came in '73 and it was offered. Thelma Garrett was the director at that time and let me tell you, she ran a tight ship. I started...
MR. MCDANIEL: So at that point how many staff were there, how many kids were there, about?
MRS. ELLIOT: We ran between 100 and 120 children and there were eight degreed teachers. You had to have a degree at that time to teach there. So there was two degreed teachers in each classroom, a director and then there was an aide that just kind of floated all over the place, so there was a staff of, what would that be? Eight, nine, 10.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you were talking about Thelma, she ran a tight ship. Tell me about her. Had she been there a long time?
MRS. ELLIOT: She'd been there a while when I got there. I don't know for sure when she came, but, of course, this was in 1973, but she'd been there several years by that time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right...
MRS. ELLIOT: She ran a tight ship and she kept the thermostat at a setting that was a little chilly which was good, but if it was a little bit cold outside and it got a little chillier and some of us were complaining or whatever, if she saw any of us go near that thermostat, you know, you almost got your hand smacked.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, I'm sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: And she would come in and -- which she always had on a ... she had on a sweater on those cool days -- and she'd come in and she'd pull that sweater and she'd say, "Now girls, if you're cold, just put on a sweater." (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: That's funny.
MRS. ELLIOT: And when we all had... we had a kind of a meeting every day at lunch time and at that time the school only ran from 9 to 12, so the kids went home at 12. It was a true nursery school at that time. And we had, from 9 to 12 we had constant education and then they got picked up.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. ELLIOT: And went elsewhere. And so, we had a kind of a lunch time teacher meeting thing.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wouldn't that be a great ... Wouldn't that be great for teachers? Isn't that great? Have kids for three hours a day?
MRS. ELLIOT: Oh, it was wonderful. It was wonderful. You never had any, you know, I mean, they weren't allowed to stay. So, that was part of it. They had to be picked up.
MR. MCDANIEL: They had to be gone.
MRS. ELLIOT: Oh, it was great. You had them ... You had them just until you were ...
MR. MCDANIEL: Until you couldn't take them any more...
MRS. ELLIOT: Until you couldn't take them anymore and then they went home and you ate your lunch and socialized or had a meeting, did your prep work. Did whatever.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: We were out of there... Some days we left at one, some days we left at two.
MR. MCDANIEL: I see. That was pretty good. That was a pretty good job, wasn't it?
MRS. ELLIOT: It was. I enjoyed that.
MR. MCDANIEL: And it wasn't like it was a 40 hour, you know, 40-50 hour a week, you know...that's the good thing about it.
MRS. ELLIOT: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, so tell me a little bit, tell me a little bit about your at the... history throughout the years at the nursery school. You know, how long were you there? What did you do?
MRS. ELLIOT: The first year I was there, since I was the new kid on the block, literally the new kid on the block, I was the only new teacher there and was a good bit younger than the other teachers that were there. I think I was, like, 10 years younger than the next youngest one. And so, I got pretty much treated that first year like a rookie.
MR. MCDANIEL: Like a kid.
MRS. ELLIOT: Like another kid.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet you learned a lot from those teachers, didn't you?
MRS. ELLIOT: Oh, let me tell you, I learned...I learned, at Oak Ridge Nursery School, how to work with groups that I worked with for the rest of my life. And I've done some work at the School for the Deaf, spent 20-something years in the Covenant Health System as an educator and I told -- and I did mostly behavioral health training and I told almost every class that I taught that I learned my skills for working with people by working with pre-school children at Oak Ridge Nursery School.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. ELLIOT: I had studied about Oak Ridge Nursery School while I was at Tennessee Tech.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MRS. ELLIOT: It was listed in, because with a degree in human ecology, even though my specialty was dietetics, you had to take other classes that went with the human ecology degree and some of those were child development.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: And so, that was one reason I was kind of excited to get to teach there because, you know, Hey, I studied this school in ... I've studied this nursery school in college as being one of the best -- being the best in the state of Tennessee.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. ELLIOT: And one of the best in the nation.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. ELLIOT: Mmm-hmm. It had real recognition.
MR. MCDANIEL: Why was that? Was it just because when they started Oak Ridge school system they just said, we're going to be the best we can possibly be...?
MRS. ELLIOT: It was never part of the Oak Ridge school system.
MR. MCDANIEL: It wasn't?
MRS. ELLIOT: It was opened independently.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MRS. ELLIOT: And I do... The reason I know Miss Garrett had been there for so long, because Miss Garrett was tapped to be on a state committee to make the regulations for all nursery schools and day care centers.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MRS. ELLIOT: As to the height of the chairs and the height of the tables.
MR. MCDANIEL: But it could, possibly it was because Oak Ridgers knew the value of education and early education.
MRS. ELLIOT: Oh, probably. Probably so because they wanted their children to be so prepared. When I was there, the first year I was there, I had, was in the classroom, it was at the far end of the building and most of the children in that class had missed kindergarten by a few days, a few weeks. Or, their families had decided, we're going to hold them back and start them a little bit older but we want them to be in a kindergarten-like setting.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: And so, we were expected to teach. And on show-and-tell day, I kind of said my prayers that, I hope none of these kids bring in something that's so difficult that I can't grasp what they're talking about. Because we had some very intelligent kids. Their parents, some of them had mom and dad both had PhDs and we had visiting scientists from other countries. That was when the visiting scientists were so common.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: And I know that that year, one of the parents from Japan came and her child was going to go back to -- they were going to be back in Japan the next year and in Japan, you had to pass an entrance exam to go into kindergarten.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: And, at that time, there was a lot of publicity about those Japanese children, that if they didn't pass the entrance exam to get into kindergarten, they committed suicide. At five years old. At five and six years old.
MR. MCDANIEL: Good Lord.
MRS. ELLIOT: We saw article after article on that and this mom would come in almost every day, wringing her hands that, "Do you think he's ready? Do you think he's ready?" And she was so scared.
MR. MCDANIEL: She was scared of that.
MRS. ELLIOT: She was. So we had to be on our toes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, absolutely.
MRS. ELLIOT: We had parents, moms that didn't speak English and they would come in and bring their children and they couldn't ask us any questions because, you know, we didn't speak their language and they didn't speak ours.
MR. MCDANIEL: But did the children speak... The children spoke English.
MRS. ELLIOT: No, they didn't.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, they didn't. I see.
MRS. ELLIOT: One year ... One year at least half of my class didn't speak English.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MRS. ELLIOT: Had one that spoke French, a couple that spoke German, one that spoke Urdu and she, it was funny, it was funny. That little girl, her mom would come in every day and they would, you know, "Ee ee ee ee" and her, she would turn around and laugh and say, "She keeps saying she does not want to learn your language, she wants you to learn hers." (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Not fun.
MRS. ELLIOT: And ... but there was one little boy that was a biter. And I think he was Lebanese and he didn't speak English either, but every child in that class, even the ones that didn't speak English, knew his name and could say, and I won't call his name because it was a distinct name, but, "He bites!"
MR. MCDANIEL: He bites.
MRS. ELLIOT: He bites. (laughs) So they could all tell us that.
MR. MCDANIEL: So you worked there for how long? How long did you work there?
MRS. ELLIOT: I was there until 1979.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: And, like I said, the first year I worked in that classroom, I think I was in that classroom maybe two years. And then moved to the total opposite end of the building working with the first ones coming in which, at that time, were three. And so I worked with the youngest ones for a while. Worked then in the four-year-old room for a little while. By this time, Miss Garrett has retired and Kathleen Blanton is the director.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: And, Kathleen had some health problems and so, everybody was looking around, like I said, I'm the new kid on the block even though by now, by this time I've been there four years, and everybody kind of looked around when she went in the hospital thinking, well... And I was reluctant to say...
MR. MCDANIEL: Somebody needs to take charge.
MRS. ELLIOT: I was reluctant to say, "I've been named her assistant." (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: Because I wasn't sure how that would sit with everybody. And so, she called me from the hospital one night and I went in the next day and said, “Well, you know, let's all get together at lunch time. I have some things I need to tell you.” And nobody thought anything about that, and so at lunch time, I said, well, started telling some things and couple of them looked up and said, well I guess we don't have to wonder who got named assistant any longer. And I thought, Ok, but, you know, it worked out beautifully. Nobody seemed to... seemed to mind.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. ELLIOT: And it went on from there. And then, was acting director for quite some time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MRS. ELLIOT: But those were some great days. I kept saying when I was there I was going to write a book about a lot of the things that the children did or said or some of the experiences, but...
MR. MCDANIEL: What was it like dealing with parents? Did you have...? I mean, was it reasonable? Or did you...? Was it difficult?
MRS. ELLIOT: As a general rule they were so appreciative of everything that we did. It was wonderful.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: The foreign parents, the ones that didn't speak English, it was so... I... That was quite a unique experience to come in and leave your 3-, 4-, 5-year-old child with total strangers at a place where you didn't speak their language and they didn't speak yours, are they going to be ok. And I can't even ask you questions about your philosophy, whatever. They would come in, the majority of them would come in and they would stand and look at us. Just look in our faces. And we, after the first time or two, you kind of knew what was expected and you stood there and you let them look.
MR. MCDANIEL: Just look at you.
MRS. ELLIOT: Just look at you for a minute or two.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: And look into your eyes, look at your face, look at your body language, look at everything then they would smile and nod.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. ELLIOT: We had some from some of the countries it was a sign of respect to bow to the teacher.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: And so, I would find myself, and they were supposed to bow last.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: And so, you know, they would bow, you know, Good Morning, or Good Day or whatever, well my head would go down, well then, they'd have to do it again. (laughs) It took a little while (laughs) it took a little while to smack yourself to realize, Don't bow back!
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MRS. ELLIOT: Don't do that because they're going to have to do it again. (laughter)
MR. MCDANIEL: How funny. So, what... So you stayed there until '79.
MRS. ELLIOT: Stayed there until '79.
MR. MCDANIEL: So by now your kids were...teenagers?
MRS. ELLIOT: My kids are 11 and 12 at this time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: And I thought, ok, I'm healthy enough I can work a little bit more and the kids will be ok because they're old enough they don't need a babysitter any longer... Wrong! (laughs) They're just at the age that where their friends are going to come over and there's nobody home.
MR. MCDANIEL: They don't need a babysitter, they need a supervisor.
MRS. ELLIOT: Absolutely. Absolutely. And that didn't occur to me until after I took the job at Roane State working in their education department. It was a child care program, child development program that was attached to their education program and our classrooms were used as the lab, education lab for their education students.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right? Who ran that program? Who was that?
MRS. ELLIOT: Well, it was a grant program through Roane State.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok, all right. That's right. But who administered... Who was the person in charge of that program? Do you remember?
MRS. ELLIOT: Rusty Kirkpatrick. Dr. Kirkpatrick.
MR. MCDANIEL: Dr. Kirkpatrick.
MRS. ELLIOT: Dr. Kirkpatrick and, oh, my, I had gone to...
MR. MCDANIEL: I had interviewed a lady, it seems -- I can't remember -- I interviewed a lady who was heavily involved in that. I can't remember who it was.
MRS. ELLIOT: Janet ... There was a Dr. Janet somebody that would also, that was very involved in that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. ELLIOT: I very much enjoyed...
MR. MCDANIEL: So, so... This was in Harriman?
MRS. ELLIOT: This was in Harriman.
MR. MCDANIEL: This was at the Harriman campus.
MRS. ELLIOT: This was at the Harriman... It was off campus, it was off the Harriman campus but it was in an old Harriman elementary school.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, sure, it was at... I can't remember. It was where Roane State originally was.
MRS. ELLIOT: Yes it was. Yes it was. So I was there from '79 to '89, actually. And totally, totally different population. Where our parents in Oak Ridge Nursery School had been very well-educated parents and when... when it came time to have open house or parents' night or whatever or even teacher conferences where they come in and talk to you about their child, one or both parents came and they listened and they discussed and they were very concerned.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: And the open houses were a time when everybody walked around and socialized and talked. First open house at Oak Ridge... uh, Harriman, the Roane State program, these were children that were placed through the courts.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right? Oh, I see.
MRS. ELLIOT: And the parents were not very trusting of us, so they would come to open house, but they kind of sat over and there was no mingling. It kind of... It was an eye-opener for me. It was very much an eye-opener even though I had grown up in a very poor county, to go from Oak Ridge Nursery School to that program -- quite an eye-opener.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, there's a difference between being poor and, I don't know what the word is I'm looking for, you know, you understand.
MRS. ELLIOT: Mmm-hmm.
MR. MCDANIEL: So you were there for 10 years.
MRS. ELLIOT: I was there for 10 years.
MR. MCDANIEL: So from '79 to '89, you said. '79 to '89. Now, what did you do after that? And by this time, your kids are in college, I would imagine.
MRS. ELLIOT: Yes, they were. My daughter was in college, my son had opted -- he had gone to college one semester and had decided to go into the Marines.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right? Ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: So he's at boot camp and I needed something to do and he went, he left to go to boot camp in January, I started my Master's in January, took some classes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: And I had said all along I was going to do a Master's but I wanted to wait until they got... and not take so much because, you know... I had gotten my undergraduate degree when they were, while they were there and I thought, “Ok, I'm not going to do this until they get a little bit older.”
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: So I started back to UT in '89 and graduated from there in '91 and so I took a few classes while I was still working but it was just a little bit difficult and finally I realized that, Ok, I think I'm just going to go...
MR. MCDANIEL: Just going to go for it.
MRS. ELLIOT: I think I'm going to go and I just quit my job and went to school full time. Got a research... graduate research assistant position and did some graduate research with one of the professors there that helped pay, at least, tuition.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly. Now what did you get your Master's in?
MRS. ELLIOT: I got it (laughs) Well, my major professor kept telling me, you need to focus, focus, focus and I'd say, I can't, I can't I can't, so I wound up with a double. It was in child and family studies and special education.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see. Ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: So when I graduated from there... By the way, my mom was in the hospital my last semester. I had waited to take statistics (laughs) I called them 'sadistics' and I'm in a research degree, ok, which I needed that statistics first, but I kind of muddled my way through and finally my major professor said, you realize that you cannot graduate 'til you take that statistics class. And I said, I know. And my mom went in the hospital probably a week after school started that fall and I was... I only had statistics left to take.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. ELLIOT: And she was in the hospital the whole semester.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, wow.
MRS. ELLIOT: Very critically ill. We weren't sure if she was going to make it. So I only had that one class which was on Tuesday and Thursday. So she was in the hospital in Livingston, which is in Overton County, so I would go over there on, I would get out of class on Thursday, be home Thursday night, we'd get up Friday morning, go over and stay -- literally stay at the hospital because we couldn't leave her alone she was so critically ill. But if one of us was not there, she just became frantic.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, yeah.
MRS. ELLIOT: Which was not good for her health and my dad had enough hearing loss, he couldn't stay. So my sister and I rotated in and out and my sister was working so I would stay from Friday 'til Tuesday, go to class from the hospital, go to class on Tuesday, be home until Friday and go back and do that again. So that was, that was a tough semester.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet.
MRS. ELLIOT: Tough semester.
MR. MCDANIEL: But you passed statistics.
MRS. ELLIOT: I passed statistics. My professor was Skyler Huck and I was just telling... one of my grandsons' friends is going to UT and he said something about, I hate math. I hate math. And I said, well I didn't have to take anything at UT except statistics, which is the closest thing to math, and I told him, I said, if you have to take statistics class, if Dr. Huck's is still there, take him. If he can get me through statistics... (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: How funny. So you got your Master's in 80...?
MRS. ELLIOT: In '91.
MR. MCDANIEL: In '91.
MRS. ELLIOT: I'm sorry, not '91, '90!
MR. MCDANIEL: '90, ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: I got it in December of '90.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok. And so you... Did you go back to work?
MRS. ELLIOT: I took about a month. At that time my son, remember, was in the Marines and this was at the time of the Gulf War.
MR. MCDANIEL: It was, wasn't it?
MRS. ELLIOT: So, even though he was in reserves he was subject, every weekend for two months, his unit would go to the coast because by this time he's down in Savannah, I mean, Augusta, Georgia, working there. And every weekend, his unit would be taken to the coast, they're going.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. ELLIOT: And then they get sent back home.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: So he was like a yo-yo during that time and so I thought, “Ok, I'm going to take a month off,” and my daughter was also, we were planning a wedding.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: And they were going to get married in Holland. Instead of paying for a wedding, we were going to pay for family and we're going to Holland and they were going to get married in the Embassy. Well, of course, they had a freeze on travel so that didn't work. So in December they put the freeze on travel, well the trip to Holland's out so, Ok, they're getting married February, in February, late February, 21, 22, somewhere along there. I've got six weeks to put a wedding together! (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: They can't go to Holland, they expect the wedding.
MRS. ELLIOT: That's right. And then we're going to have a wedding. Will my son be able to come because he was going to be one of the, you know... And so we made contingency plans. Some of the girls that were really good friends with him were saying, whose going to step in for him if he can't go? And one of the girls that was just really good friends with both my son and my daughter said, well, you can't replace a brother. We'll just put a yellow ribbon in his spot. So, you know, we're coming up with all these plans as to what we're going to do and how we're going to do it. In the meantime, I'm going back and forth to Augusta to see him.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. You didn't know when he was going to leave.
MRS. ELLIOT: Absolutely.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: So, we had the wedding. He wound up not going.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: We had the wedding. It went off beautifully, but a week before... I had done a couple of interviews, job interviews and I kept thinking, please, Lord, let one of them call me, but not before the wedding.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MRS. ELLIOT: Not before the wedding. Well, I had just about everything in place and one of them called and said, can you come... can you come next Monday? We want you to come. It was Monday before the wedding that next weekend and I thought, thank goodness, I've got everything done, I think I can do this. So I went to work for the Overlook Center.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now where is that?
MRS. ELLIOT: It is no more, but it was a community mental health center that was on Middlebrook Pike in Knoxville.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok, ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: And I was running a grant program for families of children with emotional disturbance, autism, that sort of thing.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MRS. ELLIOT: And it was a resident program. It was the first in-home program in the state, one of the first in the state of Tennessee.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: And we went into their homes and talked... We would take the children out and teach them, or not teach them, but learn from them how to manage their behavior. Because we're talking a single parent that had twin children with Downs' syndrome.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: I think he was one of our special cases. In fact, there was a write-up in the Knoxville paper about that particular family. When we went to do the intake - or when I went to do the intake with him, I asked him, you know, what do you want to do? And he said, “If I could just go to the mall.” He said, “I can't take the kids to the mall, even, because I can't control them at the mall.” So, the beauty of this program, it was a federally funded grant program, and the beauty of this program, we had... we had employees and we trained volunteers and so two people per child would go and take, in that particular family, would take the twins and we'd have four workers, two children and they'd go to the mall.
MR. MCDANIEL: And they'd go to the mall.
MRS. ELLIOT: And they would be very vigilant, ok, what's the first thing they do? And the father had told us that, you know, the minute they see that big, open space they want to just run.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. ELLIOT: And so, we were prepared for that. And so, we taught them, when you go to the mall, this is what you do.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. ELLIOT: And we taught the father, then, we would go back and tell the father, ok, this is how we taught them, this is how we managed. So we taught them how to manage their own children.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: Because they had such, such behavior issues.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, how long were you at the Overlook Center?
MRS. ELLIOT: Well, I was, I did that program for a little while and in the meantime, I was doing some training for the state because the program was operated out of Memphis and one in Murfreesboro and one in Knoxville and I was doing a lot of work with the state and would do some training on that statewide basis and so Overlook kept saying, we need someone to put together an education department for us. Why don't you do that. And I said, no, I like what I'm doing.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. ELLIOT: But it's a federal grant. It's not going to last forever and we don't know, we want to keep you, we don't know if there'll be a job for you. We need somebody to put together an education program and, no, I'm happy doing what I'm doing. So we went on... By this time my son lived in Denver, so we went to Denver on a vacation and I came back, walked in on Monday morning and they said, well, we promoted you while you were gone. We have somebody that's running your program. You are our new education director, staff education director.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly. Whether you said no or not, that's what they wanted to do.
MRS. ELLIOT: Well, they knew I was torn, they knew I enjoyed it, they knew I wanted to do it, so I think they decided and I don't know what they would have done if I'd said absolutely no.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MRS. ELLIOT: But it worked out beautifully. That was in 1994 and I retired last December with the same, doing the same thing. Was not at Overlook because Overlook and Peninsula merged and then all of it merged into the Covenant Health System.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. ELLIOT: So by the time I left, I was not just doing Overlook, I was doing behavioral education pretty much all over the Covenant system but I focused on Peninsula.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Now when did you move out -- we're in Oliver Springs here, so when did you move out of Oak Ridge to here?
MRS. ELLIOT: We moved here in 1973.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok. So you weren't in Oak Ridge a long time.
MRS. ELLIOT: No. We were there less than a year.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, yeah.
MRS. ELLIOT: When we moved here it was a week after I'd come out of the hospital with the radium implant. We ... Oh! That's another story. We closed on the house... I was in the hospital with the radium implant and, now when I had the radium implant, you have to lay flat on your back because you have, because of the way it was done. Was flat, couldn't sit up, couldn't get up and people could stand in my door for 10 minutes a day.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MRS. ELLIOT: So, for my husband to come visit me he could stand in the door for 10 minutes a day and that was it. My parents could each stand in the door 10 minutes a day. If the nurses that came in to attend me, they had to keep track of their time and they had to stay as far away as possible, they would have to kind of walk around the wall. And they had, now I'm flat on my back, can't raise the bed up. I could have a pillow and that was it. And I'm flat on my back and they would slide a tray in to me and I'm eating and drinking flat. It's quite interesting to brush your teeth in that position.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet. Or do everything else that you needed to do.
MRS. ELLIOT: Or do anything else. Of course, I was hooked up to tubes and stuff so I couldn't get up, there was no getting up to go to the bathroom, there was just no getting up.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MRS. ELLIOT: But anyway, during this time, we closed on the house and so the banker where we were getting the mortgage and my husband came over and they put the papers on the tray table and rolled it to me (laughs) and he watched me sign it.
MR. MCDANIEL: While you're in the... while you're on that treatment.
MRS. ELLIOT: While I'm there, so, we moved in. I had been out of the hospital, I don't know if it was a week or two weeks. I want to think maybe two weeks but I still wasn't allowed to do anything.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MRS. ELLIOT: And so my sister and brother-in-law came over and, but we were in a hurry to move.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, yeah.
MRS. ELLIOT: To get out of the little apartment and move, because growing up on a farm and then living in an apartment in Oak Ridge, we were ready to get out and have some space.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: So we had, at that time, a sleeper sofa, so my sister and brother-in-law came over and they slept on the sleeper sofa and did all of my moving because I was just not allowed to ... and even though I did, they fussed at me the whole time and then I started having a few little unusual symptoms and that curtailed it all, so I wound up sitting in a chair saying, put this there, put that there. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, but you... but your husband, you said, continued working at Y-12.
MRS. ELLIOT: Mmm-hmm.
MR. MCDANIEL: Until he retired.
MRS. ELLIOT: Mmm-hmm.
MR. MCDANIEL: When did he retire?
MRS. ELLIOT: He retired...he has been retired now it'll be two weeks -- two weeks, two years this... So he must have retired December of, well his official date probably was April of 2012, might have been 2011. Couple of years ago.
MR. MCDANIEL: Couple of years ago. But... But he worked at Y-12. In the... He was a machinist there, I guess.
MRS. ELLIOT: Mmm-hmm.
MR. MCDANIEL: For his career.
MRS. ELLIOT: Mmm-hmm.
MR. MCDANIEL: And y'all, really, ever since you came here you've lived in the area.
MRS. ELLIOT: We've been here.
MR. MCDANIEL: You didn't live in Oak Ridge, but you've been here, you've been in this whole general area. Where'd your kids go to high school? They go to Oliver Springs?
MRS. ELLIOT: They went to Clinton.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, they went to Clinton.
MRS. ELLIOT: They went to Clinton. They opted, of course, here in Norwood, we are in the Anderson County section.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: So Clinton was the logical place. All the other kids here in our neighborhood had gone to Clinton.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MRS. ELLIOT: And their friends were all going to Clinton so that's where they wanted to go, too. And it was a little bit tough, because I'm ... Jim's at Y-12 and it's not real easy to get in and out of there during the day and I'm in Harriman and so the first year that they went. At that time, Norwood Junior High went through ninth grade, so they didn't go... So there was one year that was a little sticky for me to get all the way from Harriman or him to get to them and then after that our daughter got her driver's license and she was able to drive.
MR. MCDANIEL: I've got one that'll be 16 in February and he's like, “Daddy, you just got to get me a car. That way you don't have to get me up, take me to school every morning,” and I'm like, I can take you to school for at least another little while, you know.
MRS. ELLIOT: Well, for us it was almost necessity.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I'm sure. Absolutely. So your life in the area sounds adventurous.
MRS. ELLIOT: We have... We have loved every minute of it. We have... We have four grandchildren. We have a, he'll be 23 in December, he's 22, be 23 in December, he is in Ireland right now studying... working on his Master's in mechanical engineering at the Dublin Institute of Technology. It's a program through Purdue University, so he's been accepted into Purdue's Master's program but the first year, he'll be in Dublin. He'll be in Dublin until January and then he'll be in Barcelona, Spain, until June.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, wow.
MRS. ELLIOT: So, we have him, we have a just-turned 20-year-old grandson who's playing football at the University of the Cumberlands so we're following the football team. And then we have an 18-year-old granddaughter who is a senior and then we have a two and a half year old who is at Oak Ridge Nursery School.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? Now where does your daughter live?
MRS. ELLIOT: My daughter lives in Clinton. Or our daughter lives in Clinton. Our son lives just about a mile down the road.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: Out on an old, called the Southern Farm.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: It's been around for a long, long, long time and he lives there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. Well thank you so much for taking time to talk with us.
MRS. ELLIOT: Well, you are welcome. I have enjoyed every minute of it. You know, you don't like... You never hate talking about yourself. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Most people like to talk about themselves. I know I get accused of that all the time. (laughs) All right, well very good, Thank you very much.
MRS. ELLIOT: Thank you.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
[End of Interview]

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ORAL HISTORY OF SANDRA ELLIOT
Interviewed by Keith McDaniel
October 9, 2013
MR. MCDANIEL: This is Keith McDaniel and today is October 9, 2013, and I am at the home of Sandra Elliot here in Oliver Springs, just outside Oak Ridge. Mrs. Elliot, thank you for taking time to talk with me.
MRS. ELLIOT: Thank you for inviting me.
MR. MCDANIEL: Let's start at the beginning. Tell me where you were born and raised, something about your family.
MRS. ELLIOT: I was born in Cookeville, Tennessee, in what is now, or was at one time, the city library. When I was growing up, it was the city library so it was kind of neat to go check out books where I was born and to get to wander through the stacks. I grew up on a farm in Middle Tennessee that's been in our family since 1830. Was part of a Revolutionary War land grant and we still own a piece of it. So we... I spent a lot of time there. It was a wonderful, wonderful absolutely the best growing up period because I had a playhouse in the pine thicket, I had a playhouse in the barn, we played in apple trees -- had a great time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, did you have brothers and sisters?
MRS. ELLIOT: I have an older sister.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: She's three years older and there were just the two of us and we were the only two grandchildren, so we were just a little bit on the spoiled side. (laughter) Now, let me just say this, growing up on a farm, my dad was of that generation that little girls didn't do heavy work, so we weren't allowed to, like, do the hay bales and that sort of thing, but we could get up in the hay loft and move them around and make playhouses, so... (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Of course, of course. Now, was your dad a full time farmer?
MRS. ELLIOT: He was a teacher. In fact, he was Biology Teacher of the Year in the 1960s for the discovery of dinosaur bones with some of his students.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MRS. ELLIOT: It was always exciting at my house. We never knew... My dad was a character. We never knew what was going to be going on in the summer so that one summer we had archeologists from -- the Smithsonian was busy that summer with a project out West so they sent the Carnegie Institute. So, for a whole summer, archeologists from the Carnegie Institute lived in my back yard and I saw them come home every day with truckloads of dinosaur bones packed in plaster. So, to see...
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? Where did they discover the dinosaur bones?
MRS. ELLIOT: It was in a cave there in Overton County. It was an unexplored cave, and Daddy did a lot of work with the Game and Fish Commission and the state in the summers. And he and his students had their own little grotto, as they called it, their little club, and they found a cave that had not been explored that much and they went into it and nobody, I guess, in millions of years, thousands of years had been down as far as they went into the cave and they found those bones and immediately started calling and recognized that we found something.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, what year was this, about?
MRS. ELLIOT: That was in 1960 or '61, somewhere along there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, has that location kind of become prestigious or famous or...?
MRS. ELLIOT: As a matter of fact, it has not. It's still on a farm. Very few people still know about it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is it your farm?
MRS. ELLIOT: It's not our farm.
MR. MCDANIEL: But it's still on somebody's farm.
MRS. ELLIOT: Mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm. It's still there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MRS. ELLIOT: And our family still occasionally gets into the cave, those of us that are still able. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: Some of us are not able! (laughter)
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, that's amazing. So you were exposed ... you were exposed not only to farm life but to education because your father was a teacher.
MRS. ELLIOT: Yes. One summer we -- don't know if I need to tell this one or not but it was legitimate. One summer, we grew pot for the Sheriff's Department. It was back when they were starting up with the pot initiative and so the local sheriff asked my dad, you know, said, "Would you be willing to grow pot and let us photograph it at different stages of development so the officers can learn to recognize it." So we grew pot one summer. (laughter)
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, there you go.
MRS. ELLIOT: We collected bats for bat research one summer. Or not for bat research but for rabies research one summer so yeah, we were ... we were busy.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, that's pretty interesting. So where did you go to high school?
MRS. ELLIOT: I went to high school at Rickman. Rickman was a 12 year school. I started there in 1954 and graduated there in 1965. Didn't have to change schools so elementary to middle school was, you just went to the next hallway. And same thing to high school. Although there was a very distinct division. You didn't, unless you were in junior high, middle or whatever, go in that hallway.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly. Now, how big was the school, I mean, how many was your graduating class?
MRS. ELLIOT: 39.
MR. MCDANIEL: 39.
MRS. ELLIOT: And that was the largest class to date.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MRS. ELLIOT: When I graduated in 1965. The school closed in 1985. It consolidated in with a larger school.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. And that was in...Overton County?
MRS. ELLIOT: That was in Overton County.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok. All right. Now Overton County, Cookeville's not in Overton County, is it?
MRS. ELLIOT: Cookeville's in Putnam County.
MR. MCDANIEL: That's right. And Overton County's just north...
MRS. ELLIOT: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: ... of Putnam County.
MRS. ELLIOT: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you graduated, (coughs) excuse me... So you graduated school and you went to college, I imagine.
MRS. ELLIOT: Went for one year, met my husband, and we got married and moved to Arkansas and I dropped out for a couple of years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, where'd you go for that one year?
MRS. ELLIOT: We went to Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
MR. MCDANIEL: No, I meant where did you go to college?
MRS. ELLIOT: Oh, where'd I go... I went to Tennessee Tech.
MR. MCDANIEL: Went to Tennessee Tech.
MRS. ELLIOT: Went to Tennessee Tech in Cookeville.
MR. MCDANIEL: And did you meet him at Tennessee Tech?
MRS. ELLIOT: We met in the swimming pool at Tennessee Tech. (laughs) I was swimming around with some friends and somebody poured cold water on my head -- ice cold water, I might add -- and I looked up and it was my husband with a toy boat full of cold water. So that's how we met.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok. And then you got married and you said you moved to Pine Bluff.
MRS. ELLIOT: We moved to Pine Bluff. We were there for a year, then came back to Nashville so that he could go to school in Nashville. And I still had the idea that, I'm going to go to school. Now, I wanted to go to school, take some classes, in Pine Bluff but the only school there was the A&M school and at that time the school's colleges were still segregated.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. ELLIOT: At least they were there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Uh-huh. Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: And I probably could have pushed and gone but that was during, that was in 1966.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, that was a tough time.
MRS. ELLIOT: That was a tough time and you just didn't rock any boats at that time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. And especially in Arkansas.
MRS. ELLIOT: Especially in Arkansas. We lived in Nashville when Martin Luther King was assassinated and those were tough times, too.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really?
MRS. ELLIOT: Mmm-hmm. We had curfews. Curfew was at 7 o'clock... 7 p.m. and because we were quite poor at that time, with my husband in school and I wasn't working, we had one car and it was a struggle. We also had a baby by this time and it was a struggle for him to get home and to get to the grocery store, but you didn't dare go out after 7 o'clock. You just didn't.
MR. MCDANIEL: Just a quick aside: You mentioned that you were living in Nashville. Interviewed a lady that taught at Linden Elementary School for years and years and years. She told me the story about, back then, the kids would go everywhere on field trips, you know, it was nothing from them to go, excuse me, nothing for them to go to Nashville. And, as a matter of fact, they were on their way back from a field trip to Nashville the day Martin Luther King was killed and it was getting kind of late in the day and, of course, this was before cell phones and, you know, they didn't know anything about it until they got to the school and there were a bunch of worried parents about it, because they didn't know what was going to happen.
MRS. ELLIOT: Absolutely. And Nashville was locked down and as intense, almost as Memphis was.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, Nashville was... there was a lot of racial strife in Nashville.
MRS. ELLIOT: Absolutely. It was very tense times and so, to come from Pine Bluff, Arkansas and see the racial times that were there, it was totally different. And where I had grown up in Overton County, we just didn't have any of those situations. And my husband had to keep reminding me in Pine Bluff, he kept reminding me that, "You can't ... you can't do that." And, believe it or not, the stores still had segregated registers when we lived in Pine Bluff.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MRS. ELLIOT: I started to get in the short line one day and my husband pulled me by the shirt and said, "You can't get in that line." And I said, "Why not? It's shorter than this one." And he said, "You can't do that." And, I don't play those games. I don't care about that and he pulled me back and he said, "Honey, it's just not safe right now. You can't be the little Overton County girl down here, regardless of your beliefs, you just can't do that. It's not safe."
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. So you were in Nashville. Your husband was going to school. So, what next?
MRS. ELLIOT: We moved back to the farm.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: My grandparents' house was vacant on the farm and we did some remodeling on the house, moved back to the farm. My husband worked for just a short time in Cookeville and I started to Tennessee Tech. By this time we had two babies, ok. So, I go back to school to finish my last three years with two babies. Can't tell you how many times that I spent lying on my tummy on the floor with two kids bouncing, playing horsy on my back and I'm studying chemistry,
MR. MCDANIEL: Of course, of course.
MRS. ELLIOT: Ok. So, that was... (laughs) He worked in Cookeville for a year and then was able to get on here in Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: What did he study in school?
MRS. ELLIOT: He was a machinist.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MRS. ELLIOT: Tool and die maker machinist.
MR. MCDANIEL: (coughs) Excuse me. I've had horrible allergies this year. Excuse me. Oh, so he was a machinist.
MRS. ELLIOT: Mmm-hmmm.
MR. MCDANIEL: And I imagine when he came to Oak Ridge he went to work at Y-12.
MRS. ELLIOT: He went to work at Y-12.
MR. MCDANIEL: What year was that?
MRS. ELLIOT: That was in either the fall of 1969 or the fall of 1970. I believe 1970, yeah, it was '70 because I started back to school in '69 and he was there for a year.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. ELLIOT: So from... He moved over here in 1970 and I stayed there because we had established babysitter.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: And I had family there that, if...
MR. MCDANIEL: If you needed help.
MRS. ELLIOT: If I needed help. So he came over here and he would come home on weekends. So we lived like that until, for a couple of years and that kind of changed the dynamics of the family.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: I think from that point on, the kids learned that Mama has the final say-so and, you know, even on until this day, if the kids call about some decision, and my husband answers the phone, they're ultimately going to ask to speak to me.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, of course.
MRS. ELLIOT: That just changed the family dynamics.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, that's just the way things are supposed to be. It's the way it is at my house.
MRS. ELLIOT: Well, if Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. (laughter) So maybe it was that and not just the...
MR. MCDANIEL: Except the other night, my 15-year-old, because he knew -- he was asking to do something. His mother had already told him, "No," and I knew that. "Well, Daddy," he says, "You can override her." I said, "I could, but do I want to?" I said, "I don't know that I want to do that." (laughter) "Well," he said, "She's not here. You can make that decision." I said, "Well, that is true, but I don't think I want to do that."
MRS. ELLIOT: There you go.
MR. MCDANIEL: So I certainly understand that. And I'm sure you probably felt, that probably made you feel fairly independent, too. Or at least, you know...
MRS. ELLIOT: I don't think I had time to really become that independent because trying to keep the house going and two kids and go to school full time. I was in school full time. I mean, one semester -- well, we were quarters at that time -- I took 21 hours and that was a load, let me tell you. I didn't really have time to do that much.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. But your husband, he liked his job at Y-12.
MRS. ELLIOT: He liked it. He stayed there for ... well, he retired from Y-12.
MR. MCDANIEL: Did he? So, you finished school.
MRS. ELLIOT: Finished school. Finished school in 1972 and coming over here, we were... By that time we had two vehicles, and driving over, we were almost like two little kids. We were on the interstate and I can remember for a minute or two, I would drive up even and my husband would be over there and wave. I mean, we were almost giddy. And for the first year, because my son was four and my daughter was going to start to kindergarten, and I had been so involved, I decided to not work that first year.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MRS. ELLIOT: But, I took my son to -- decided to put him in nursery school for a couple of days a week, because my daughter was in kindergarten and wandered in to Oak Ridge Nursery School sometime after the first of the year.
MR. MCDANIEL: And where was the nursery school?
MRS. ELLIOT: Oak Ridge Nursery School?
MR. MCDANIEL: At that time.
MRS. ELLIOT: It was at the same place that it is now. It's always been at 155... I mean 151 Robertsville Road.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right? Ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: I believe that's the address: 151 Robertsville Road.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MRS. ELLIOT: It's always been, since it was built back in the 1940s and that's the original building there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Let me ask you, before we get into the nursery school, now, where did you all live in Oak Ridge? Was your husband already... Did he already have a place?
MRS. ELLIOT: No, he was in a little, tiny little apartment type thing. We lived in one of the duplexes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, did you?
MRS. ELLIOT: Yeah. In the Highland View area but don't ask me the address, but it was in the Highland View area. And my daughter went to kindergarten at Highland View. And, as I said, my son was in nursery school, and I applied... I was always going to be a dietitian, ok. That was what my focus was in school.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, you're interested in that. You grew up on a farm, you knew about, you know, plants and foods and what was good for you and what wasn't good for you.
MRS. ELLIOT: I was going to be a therapeutic dietitian and, at that time, there was... you could work under, of course, with having two children, I couldn't go to the internship in Atlanta or Nashville, which was the closest places, but you could do an internship sort of thing by working under a registered dietitian in the hospital. So I got hired by Oak Ridge Hospital to work as kind of a dietitian assistant, I guess.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MRS. ELLIOT: But would, ultimately, be able to get my license.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: And my son had to have surgery. So I called them and I said, "Look, his surgery's going to be fairly serious. I'm not going to be able to take this job, after all." Because they wanted some evening work and that sort of thing. "I'm just not going to be able to do this right now, thank you for the opportunity." And, Oak Ridge Nursery School said, "Would you like to substitute?" (laughs) So I substituted the rest of that year.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok. So you... So this... What year was that? '72?
MRS. ELLIOT: That was in '72.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: Started to... I had cancer that summer of '73.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, you did?
MRS. ELLIOT: Had pretty serious cancer and wound up having pretty serious treatment.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. ELLIOT: And this was before chemo, so the treatments were pretty radical at that time, pretty damaging. And I was pretty young and a little bit scared, but not as much... You know, somehow, when you're in your early 20s you just don't think, "I'm going to die."
MR. MCDANIEL: You don't think about that.
MRS. ELLIOT: No, you don't. Even though they're telling you. Probably at 2 o'clock in the morning I would wake up and think, "Oh, my..." you know, "I could die." But the rest of the time I was, you know, could push that to the side. So, when it came time in the fall, they had offered me a position. And the doctor said, 'Well, you're really not able to go to work and carry a work load and have children,' you know manage your children, 'and your home and all that. But, I guess, if you promise faithfully that you'll have someone in to clean your house and help you do some things, take that pay you're going to get and pay somebody to do some of your other things, I guess we can go ahead and release you to work.
MR. MCDANIEL: That's amazing that the doctor would talk about that. You wouldn't think a doctor today would even ...
MRS. ELLIOT: Would even think about that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Would even think about that, you know.
MRS. ELLIOT: But my doctor was Dr. Diddle, he was in Knoxville and he became almost like a grandfather to me.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MRS. ELLIOT: The first day we went in to see him, they had -- the doctor that referred me was from Oak Ridge and had referred me to the doctor in Knoxville and he said, you know, your husband needs to take off from work, this is serious, he needs to go with you and he needs to be there and hear everything because you may or may not. Well, that wasn't Dr. Diddle's way.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: Dr. Diddle, when my husband... They called me back and my husband went back and he looked, the doctor looked up and he said, "I don't want you back here right now." And my husband said, "Well, I'm going to stay." And he said, "Well you sit down over there and don't you say a word because I'm talking to her." And I thought, "I don't like him." (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MRS. ELLIOT: (laughing) I don't like him. But, you know, before it was over, he would come in and he'd pat -- when I was in the hospital -- he'd come in and he'd pat me on the hand, you know, "How you doing today?" and he almost became like a grandfather because he was older than my father. He was close to retirement age at that time and, they said, the best.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: But I came to just absolutely love the man, but he was crusty! (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: He probably didn't like it when doctors talked to the husband about the wives in front of the wives? Maybe that was an over... that was kind of a reaction to that.
MRS. ELLIOT: Possibly so, but, you know, I thought at the time, because I was kind of -- when they told me I actually had cancer, for the first 24 hours I was kind of Bzzzt!
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: You know. My brain was numb and I think my husband recognized that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MRS. ELLIOT: And wasn't sure if I'd be able to continue.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, yeah, yeah.
MRS. ELLIOT: But, you know, Dr. Diddle, that didn't faze him. He wanted to talk to me and me only.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure. My goodness. So, you go through your treatment and, I guess you... obviously, you go into remission or it's gone or...
MRS. ELLIOT: It was completely... It was completely gone, removed. No surgery, but all radiation treatments. And so, everything was, I guess, nuked. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: How long did it take? How long did you have radiation treatments?
MRS. ELLIOT: I had 35 cobalt treatments and then a week of radium implant. The radium implant was Monday morning to Friday night which was pretty... pretty intense.
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: And the whole time... And I was in a research project, so that was cutting edge at the time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see. Right, right, exactly.
MRS. ELLIOT: And everybody here kept telling me... because at that time in Oak Ridge they were doing some pretty radical stuff on ... on extreme.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly. Yeah.
MRS. ELLIOT: So I had people telling me that, "Oh, if you go to that place in Oak Ridge they'll bury you in this hole in the ground and do something." And I thought, "Oh, my!" you know, "Is that going to happen to me?" (laughs) Because I was young enough and naive enough, I didn't...
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MRS. ELLIOT: I didn't have a clue what was coming.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, my. Yeah, that was about the time that they were... That ORINS [Oak Ridge Institute for Nuclear Science] was doing all of... a lot of their research and such as that.
MRS. ELLIOT: Yes. And acquaintances, friends and acquaintances... We were youth leaders at the church at the time, so those youth kids didn't think anything about telling me about 'Aunt Susie' that had had this or that radical treatment and, you know, she didn't live! (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: You know, that's the thing about... I've interviewed several people, several physicians that worked at ORINS and other people, pathologists and things such as that, and I mean, you know, you didn't get sent there unless there was just about no hope for you.
MRS. ELLIOT: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: I mean, that was the thing.
MRS. ELLIOT: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: So you should feel good that you didn't... If I got sent there, I'd have been worried.
MRS. ELLIOT: I didn't, but I didn't really know at the time that it was... 'cause we hadn't lived here that long.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, yeah, sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: And I didn't know anything about it and the only place for treatment at that time was at UT hospital.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, was it?
MRS. ELLIOT: So, I would go to UT hospital and you went in the front door and you went down into the basement. And my ... my recollection of their, of the offices there, they had the cast-off furniture. Part of it... The waiting room was a hallway, you sat there lined up, and I think it was even grey, either grey or beige, and, you know, I've often thought I'd like to have pictures and see that again, it probably wasn't nearly as dour.
MR. MCDANIEL: Probably wasn't nearly... I don't know, it probably was. Probably that industrial green color or some of it, the floors were.
MRS. ELLIOT: I think in those days if you were a cancer patient there wasn't much point in putting too much into your environment because you were going to die anyway. (laughs) That's just kind of the way it was.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now... So, but you recovered. How long did your body take to really get back to normal?
MRS. ELLIOT: Well, they told me when I started the treatments that it would take 20 years for all the scars to develop.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. ELLIOT: So through... This was in ... so through the 1970s and well into the 1980s, I wound up in the hospital about once a year, so that they could do some tests and would sometimes stay as much as a week. Now they do most of that testing outpatient but at that time you went in the hospital for it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. You still go in and do...?
MRS. ELLIOT: I would have to go in, that's just was the way it was. My husband was my mentor...he was my guardian, I guess. He would say, "Now, you're burning the candle at both ends. You're running... you're doing too much. You're going to wind up sick, you're going to wind up in the hospital." And the doctors had told me, Dr. Diddle and Dr. Komas were -- one was one doctor and one was the other -- and they had told me that, you know, for somebody in their early 20s, you're going to have to learn to live like somebody much older.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MRS. ELLIOT: Because your immune system is not going to be as good, you're not going to have the energy, you're going to have this, that and the other, so you're going to have to learn to pace yourself like older people do.
MR. MCDANIEL: So did you?
MRS. ELLIOT: Well, it took many hospitalizations before I learned to pace. Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: So when did you go back to working at the nursery school?
MRS. ELLIOT: Well, I had not started to work at that time. That was in the summer of '73 and I'd subbed in the fall of '72 and '73, so there was a position that came in '73 and it was offered. Thelma Garrett was the director at that time and let me tell you, she ran a tight ship. I started...
MR. MCDANIEL: So at that point how many staff were there, how many kids were there, about?
MRS. ELLIOT: We ran between 100 and 120 children and there were eight degreed teachers. You had to have a degree at that time to teach there. So there was two degreed teachers in each classroom, a director and then there was an aide that just kind of floated all over the place, so there was a staff of, what would that be? Eight, nine, 10.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you were talking about Thelma, she ran a tight ship. Tell me about her. Had she been there a long time?
MRS. ELLIOT: She'd been there a while when I got there. I don't know for sure when she came, but, of course, this was in 1973, but she'd been there several years by that time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right...
MRS. ELLIOT: She ran a tight ship and she kept the thermostat at a setting that was a little chilly which was good, but if it was a little bit cold outside and it got a little chillier and some of us were complaining or whatever, if she saw any of us go near that thermostat, you know, you almost got your hand smacked.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, I'm sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: And she would come in and -- which she always had on a ... she had on a sweater on those cool days -- and she'd come in and she'd pull that sweater and she'd say, "Now girls, if you're cold, just put on a sweater." (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: That's funny.
MRS. ELLIOT: And when we all had... we had a kind of a meeting every day at lunch time and at that time the school only ran from 9 to 12, so the kids went home at 12. It was a true nursery school at that time. And we had, from 9 to 12 we had constant education and then they got picked up.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. ELLIOT: And went elsewhere. And so, we had a kind of a lunch time teacher meeting thing.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wouldn't that be a great ... Wouldn't that be great for teachers? Isn't that great? Have kids for three hours a day?
MRS. ELLIOT: Oh, it was wonderful. It was wonderful. You never had any, you know, I mean, they weren't allowed to stay. So, that was part of it. They had to be picked up.
MR. MCDANIEL: They had to be gone.
MRS. ELLIOT: Oh, it was great. You had them ... You had them just until you were ...
MR. MCDANIEL: Until you couldn't take them any more...
MRS. ELLIOT: Until you couldn't take them anymore and then they went home and you ate your lunch and socialized or had a meeting, did your prep work. Did whatever.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: We were out of there... Some days we left at one, some days we left at two.
MR. MCDANIEL: I see. That was pretty good. That was a pretty good job, wasn't it?
MRS. ELLIOT: It was. I enjoyed that.
MR. MCDANIEL: And it wasn't like it was a 40 hour, you know, 40-50 hour a week, you know...that's the good thing about it.
MRS. ELLIOT: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, so tell me a little bit, tell me a little bit about your at the... history throughout the years at the nursery school. You know, how long were you there? What did you do?
MRS. ELLIOT: The first year I was there, since I was the new kid on the block, literally the new kid on the block, I was the only new teacher there and was a good bit younger than the other teachers that were there. I think I was, like, 10 years younger than the next youngest one. And so, I got pretty much treated that first year like a rookie.
MR. MCDANIEL: Like a kid.
MRS. ELLIOT: Like another kid.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet you learned a lot from those teachers, didn't you?
MRS. ELLIOT: Oh, let me tell you, I learned...I learned, at Oak Ridge Nursery School, how to work with groups that I worked with for the rest of my life. And I've done some work at the School for the Deaf, spent 20-something years in the Covenant Health System as an educator and I told -- and I did mostly behavioral health training and I told almost every class that I taught that I learned my skills for working with people by working with pre-school children at Oak Ridge Nursery School.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. ELLIOT: I had studied about Oak Ridge Nursery School while I was at Tennessee Tech.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MRS. ELLIOT: It was listed in, because with a degree in human ecology, even though my specialty was dietetics, you had to take other classes that went with the human ecology degree and some of those were child development.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: And so, that was one reason I was kind of excited to get to teach there because, you know, Hey, I studied this school in ... I've studied this nursery school in college as being one of the best -- being the best in the state of Tennessee.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. ELLIOT: And one of the best in the nation.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. ELLIOT: Mmm-hmm. It had real recognition.
MR. MCDANIEL: Why was that? Was it just because when they started Oak Ridge school system they just said, we're going to be the best we can possibly be...?
MRS. ELLIOT: It was never part of the Oak Ridge school system.
MR. MCDANIEL: It wasn't?
MRS. ELLIOT: It was opened independently.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MRS. ELLIOT: And I do... The reason I know Miss Garrett had been there for so long, because Miss Garrett was tapped to be on a state committee to make the regulations for all nursery schools and day care centers.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MRS. ELLIOT: As to the height of the chairs and the height of the tables.
MR. MCDANIEL: But it could, possibly it was because Oak Ridgers knew the value of education and early education.
MRS. ELLIOT: Oh, probably. Probably so because they wanted their children to be so prepared. When I was there, the first year I was there, I had, was in the classroom, it was at the far end of the building and most of the children in that class had missed kindergarten by a few days, a few weeks. Or, their families had decided, we're going to hold them back and start them a little bit older but we want them to be in a kindergarten-like setting.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: And so, we were expected to teach. And on show-and-tell day, I kind of said my prayers that, I hope none of these kids bring in something that's so difficult that I can't grasp what they're talking about. Because we had some very intelligent kids. Their parents, some of them had mom and dad both had PhDs and we had visiting scientists from other countries. That was when the visiting scientists were so common.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: And I know that that year, one of the parents from Japan came and her child was going to go back to -- they were going to be back in Japan the next year and in Japan, you had to pass an entrance exam to go into kindergarten.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: And, at that time, there was a lot of publicity about those Japanese children, that if they didn't pass the entrance exam to get into kindergarten, they committed suicide. At five years old. At five and six years old.
MR. MCDANIEL: Good Lord.
MRS. ELLIOT: We saw article after article on that and this mom would come in almost every day, wringing her hands that, "Do you think he's ready? Do you think he's ready?" And she was so scared.
MR. MCDANIEL: She was scared of that.
MRS. ELLIOT: She was. So we had to be on our toes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, absolutely.
MRS. ELLIOT: We had parents, moms that didn't speak English and they would come in and bring their children and they couldn't ask us any questions because, you know, we didn't speak their language and they didn't speak ours.
MR. MCDANIEL: But did the children speak... The children spoke English.
MRS. ELLIOT: No, they didn't.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, they didn't. I see.
MRS. ELLIOT: One year ... One year at least half of my class didn't speak English.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MRS. ELLIOT: Had one that spoke French, a couple that spoke German, one that spoke Urdu and she, it was funny, it was funny. That little girl, her mom would come in every day and they would, you know, "Ee ee ee ee" and her, she would turn around and laugh and say, "She keeps saying she does not want to learn your language, she wants you to learn hers." (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Not fun.
MRS. ELLIOT: And ... but there was one little boy that was a biter. And I think he was Lebanese and he didn't speak English either, but every child in that class, even the ones that didn't speak English, knew his name and could say, and I won't call his name because it was a distinct name, but, "He bites!"
MR. MCDANIEL: He bites.
MRS. ELLIOT: He bites. (laughs) So they could all tell us that.
MR. MCDANIEL: So you worked there for how long? How long did you work there?
MRS. ELLIOT: I was there until 1979.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: And, like I said, the first year I worked in that classroom, I think I was in that classroom maybe two years. And then moved to the total opposite end of the building working with the first ones coming in which, at that time, were three. And so I worked with the youngest ones for a while. Worked then in the four-year-old room for a little while. By this time, Miss Garrett has retired and Kathleen Blanton is the director.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: And, Kathleen had some health problems and so, everybody was looking around, like I said, I'm the new kid on the block even though by now, by this time I've been there four years, and everybody kind of looked around when she went in the hospital thinking, well... And I was reluctant to say...
MR. MCDANIEL: Somebody needs to take charge.
MRS. ELLIOT: I was reluctant to say, "I've been named her assistant." (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: Because I wasn't sure how that would sit with everybody. And so, she called me from the hospital one night and I went in the next day and said, “Well, you know, let's all get together at lunch time. I have some things I need to tell you.” And nobody thought anything about that, and so at lunch time, I said, well, started telling some things and couple of them looked up and said, well I guess we don't have to wonder who got named assistant any longer. And I thought, Ok, but, you know, it worked out beautifully. Nobody seemed to... seemed to mind.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. ELLIOT: And it went on from there. And then, was acting director for quite some time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MRS. ELLIOT: But those were some great days. I kept saying when I was there I was going to write a book about a lot of the things that the children did or said or some of the experiences, but...
MR. MCDANIEL: What was it like dealing with parents? Did you have...? I mean, was it reasonable? Or did you...? Was it difficult?
MRS. ELLIOT: As a general rule they were so appreciative of everything that we did. It was wonderful.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: The foreign parents, the ones that didn't speak English, it was so... I... That was quite a unique experience to come in and leave your 3-, 4-, 5-year-old child with total strangers at a place where you didn't speak their language and they didn't speak yours, are they going to be ok. And I can't even ask you questions about your philosophy, whatever. They would come in, the majority of them would come in and they would stand and look at us. Just look in our faces. And we, after the first time or two, you kind of knew what was expected and you stood there and you let them look.
MR. MCDANIEL: Just look at you.
MRS. ELLIOT: Just look at you for a minute or two.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: And look into your eyes, look at your face, look at your body language, look at everything then they would smile and nod.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. ELLIOT: We had some from some of the countries it was a sign of respect to bow to the teacher.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: And so, I would find myself, and they were supposed to bow last.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: And so, you know, they would bow, you know, Good Morning, or Good Day or whatever, well my head would go down, well then, they'd have to do it again. (laughs) It took a little while (laughs) it took a little while to smack yourself to realize, Don't bow back!
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MRS. ELLIOT: Don't do that because they're going to have to do it again. (laughter)
MR. MCDANIEL: How funny. So, what... So you stayed there until '79.
MRS. ELLIOT: Stayed there until '79.
MR. MCDANIEL: So by now your kids were...teenagers?
MRS. ELLIOT: My kids are 11 and 12 at this time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: And I thought, ok, I'm healthy enough I can work a little bit more and the kids will be ok because they're old enough they don't need a babysitter any longer... Wrong! (laughs) They're just at the age that where their friends are going to come over and there's nobody home.
MR. MCDANIEL: They don't need a babysitter, they need a supervisor.
MRS. ELLIOT: Absolutely. Absolutely. And that didn't occur to me until after I took the job at Roane State working in their education department. It was a child care program, child development program that was attached to their education program and our classrooms were used as the lab, education lab for their education students.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right? Who ran that program? Who was that?
MRS. ELLIOT: Well, it was a grant program through Roane State.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok, all right. That's right. But who administered... Who was the person in charge of that program? Do you remember?
MRS. ELLIOT: Rusty Kirkpatrick. Dr. Kirkpatrick.
MR. MCDANIEL: Dr. Kirkpatrick.
MRS. ELLIOT: Dr. Kirkpatrick and, oh, my, I had gone to...
MR. MCDANIEL: I had interviewed a lady, it seems -- I can't remember -- I interviewed a lady who was heavily involved in that. I can't remember who it was.
MRS. ELLIOT: Janet ... There was a Dr. Janet somebody that would also, that was very involved in that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. ELLIOT: I very much enjoyed...
MR. MCDANIEL: So, so... This was in Harriman?
MRS. ELLIOT: This was in Harriman.
MR. MCDANIEL: This was at the Harriman campus.
MRS. ELLIOT: This was at the Harriman... It was off campus, it was off the Harriman campus but it was in an old Harriman elementary school.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, sure, it was at... I can't remember. It was where Roane State originally was.
MRS. ELLIOT: Yes it was. Yes it was. So I was there from '79 to '89, actually. And totally, totally different population. Where our parents in Oak Ridge Nursery School had been very well-educated parents and when... when it came time to have open house or parents' night or whatever or even teacher conferences where they come in and talk to you about their child, one or both parents came and they listened and they discussed and they were very concerned.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: And the open houses were a time when everybody walked around and socialized and talked. First open house at Oak Ridge... uh, Harriman, the Roane State program, these were children that were placed through the courts.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right? Oh, I see.
MRS. ELLIOT: And the parents were not very trusting of us, so they would come to open house, but they kind of sat over and there was no mingling. It kind of... It was an eye-opener for me. It was very much an eye-opener even though I had grown up in a very poor county, to go from Oak Ridge Nursery School to that program -- quite an eye-opener.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, there's a difference between being poor and, I don't know what the word is I'm looking for, you know, you understand.
MRS. ELLIOT: Mmm-hmm.
MR. MCDANIEL: So you were there for 10 years.
MRS. ELLIOT: I was there for 10 years.
MR. MCDANIEL: So from '79 to '89, you said. '79 to '89. Now, what did you do after that? And by this time, your kids are in college, I would imagine.
MRS. ELLIOT: Yes, they were. My daughter was in college, my son had opted -- he had gone to college one semester and had decided to go into the Marines.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right? Ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: So he's at boot camp and I needed something to do and he went, he left to go to boot camp in January, I started my Master's in January, took some classes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: And I had said all along I was going to do a Master's but I wanted to wait until they got... and not take so much because, you know... I had gotten my undergraduate degree when they were, while they were there and I thought, “Ok, I'm not going to do this until they get a little bit older.”
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: So I started back to UT in '89 and graduated from there in '91 and so I took a few classes while I was still working but it was just a little bit difficult and finally I realized that, Ok, I think I'm just going to go...
MR. MCDANIEL: Just going to go for it.
MRS. ELLIOT: I think I'm going to go and I just quit my job and went to school full time. Got a research... graduate research assistant position and did some graduate research with one of the professors there that helped pay, at least, tuition.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly. Now what did you get your Master's in?
MRS. ELLIOT: I got it (laughs) Well, my major professor kept telling me, you need to focus, focus, focus and I'd say, I can't, I can't I can't, so I wound up with a double. It was in child and family studies and special education.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see. Ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: So when I graduated from there... By the way, my mom was in the hospital my last semester. I had waited to take statistics (laughs) I called them 'sadistics' and I'm in a research degree, ok, which I needed that statistics first, but I kind of muddled my way through and finally my major professor said, you realize that you cannot graduate 'til you take that statistics class. And I said, I know. And my mom went in the hospital probably a week after school started that fall and I was... I only had statistics left to take.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. ELLIOT: And she was in the hospital the whole semester.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, wow.
MRS. ELLIOT: Very critically ill. We weren't sure if she was going to make it. So I only had that one class which was on Tuesday and Thursday. So she was in the hospital in Livingston, which is in Overton County, so I would go over there on, I would get out of class on Thursday, be home Thursday night, we'd get up Friday morning, go over and stay -- literally stay at the hospital because we couldn't leave her alone she was so critically ill. But if one of us was not there, she just became frantic.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, yeah.
MRS. ELLIOT: Which was not good for her health and my dad had enough hearing loss, he couldn't stay. So my sister and I rotated in and out and my sister was working so I would stay from Friday 'til Tuesday, go to class from the hospital, go to class on Tuesday, be home until Friday and go back and do that again. So that was, that was a tough semester.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet.
MRS. ELLIOT: Tough semester.
MR. MCDANIEL: But you passed statistics.
MRS. ELLIOT: I passed statistics. My professor was Skyler Huck and I was just telling... one of my grandsons' friends is going to UT and he said something about, I hate math. I hate math. And I said, well I didn't have to take anything at UT except statistics, which is the closest thing to math, and I told him, I said, if you have to take statistics class, if Dr. Huck's is still there, take him. If he can get me through statistics... (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: How funny. So you got your Master's in 80...?
MRS. ELLIOT: In '91.
MR. MCDANIEL: In '91.
MRS. ELLIOT: I'm sorry, not '91, '90!
MR. MCDANIEL: '90, ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: I got it in December of '90.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok. And so you... Did you go back to work?
MRS. ELLIOT: I took about a month. At that time my son, remember, was in the Marines and this was at the time of the Gulf War.
MR. MCDANIEL: It was, wasn't it?
MRS. ELLIOT: So, even though he was in reserves he was subject, every weekend for two months, his unit would go to the coast because by this time he's down in Savannah, I mean, Augusta, Georgia, working there. And every weekend, his unit would be taken to the coast, they're going.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. ELLIOT: And then they get sent back home.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: So he was like a yo-yo during that time and so I thought, “Ok, I'm going to take a month off,” and my daughter was also, we were planning a wedding.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: And they were going to get married in Holland. Instead of paying for a wedding, we were going to pay for family and we're going to Holland and they were going to get married in the Embassy. Well, of course, they had a freeze on travel so that didn't work. So in December they put the freeze on travel, well the trip to Holland's out so, Ok, they're getting married February, in February, late February, 21, 22, somewhere along there. I've got six weeks to put a wedding together! (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: They can't go to Holland, they expect the wedding.
MRS. ELLIOT: That's right. And then we're going to have a wedding. Will my son be able to come because he was going to be one of the, you know... And so we made contingency plans. Some of the girls that were really good friends with him were saying, whose going to step in for him if he can't go? And one of the girls that was just really good friends with both my son and my daughter said, well, you can't replace a brother. We'll just put a yellow ribbon in his spot. So, you know, we're coming up with all these plans as to what we're going to do and how we're going to do it. In the meantime, I'm going back and forth to Augusta to see him.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. You didn't know when he was going to leave.
MRS. ELLIOT: Absolutely.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: So, we had the wedding. He wound up not going.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: We had the wedding. It went off beautifully, but a week before... I had done a couple of interviews, job interviews and I kept thinking, please, Lord, let one of them call me, but not before the wedding.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MRS. ELLIOT: Not before the wedding. Well, I had just about everything in place and one of them called and said, can you come... can you come next Monday? We want you to come. It was Monday before the wedding that next weekend and I thought, thank goodness, I've got everything done, I think I can do this. So I went to work for the Overlook Center.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now where is that?
MRS. ELLIOT: It is no more, but it was a community mental health center that was on Middlebrook Pike in Knoxville.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok, ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: And I was running a grant program for families of children with emotional disturbance, autism, that sort of thing.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MRS. ELLIOT: And it was a resident program. It was the first in-home program in the state, one of the first in the state of Tennessee.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: And we went into their homes and talked... We would take the children out and teach them, or not teach them, but learn from them how to manage their behavior. Because we're talking a single parent that had twin children with Downs' syndrome.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: I think he was one of our special cases. In fact, there was a write-up in the Knoxville paper about that particular family. When we went to do the intake - or when I went to do the intake with him, I asked him, you know, what do you want to do? And he said, “If I could just go to the mall.” He said, “I can't take the kids to the mall, even, because I can't control them at the mall.” So, the beauty of this program, it was a federally funded grant program, and the beauty of this program, we had... we had employees and we trained volunteers and so two people per child would go and take, in that particular family, would take the twins and we'd have four workers, two children and they'd go to the mall.
MR. MCDANIEL: And they'd go to the mall.
MRS. ELLIOT: And they would be very vigilant, ok, what's the first thing they do? And the father had told us that, you know, the minute they see that big, open space they want to just run.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. ELLIOT: And so, we were prepared for that. And so, we taught them, when you go to the mall, this is what you do.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. ELLIOT: And we taught the father, then, we would go back and tell the father, ok, this is how we taught them, this is how we managed. So we taught them how to manage their own children.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: Because they had such, such behavior issues.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, how long were you at the Overlook Center?
MRS. ELLIOT: Well, I was, I did that program for a little while and in the meantime, I was doing some training for the state because the program was operated out of Memphis and one in Murfreesboro and one in Knoxville and I was doing a lot of work with the state and would do some training on that statewide basis and so Overlook kept saying, we need someone to put together an education department for us. Why don't you do that. And I said, no, I like what I'm doing.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. ELLIOT: But it's a federal grant. It's not going to last forever and we don't know, we want to keep you, we don't know if there'll be a job for you. We need somebody to put together an education program and, no, I'm happy doing what I'm doing. So we went on... By this time my son lived in Denver, so we went to Denver on a vacation and I came back, walked in on Monday morning and they said, well, we promoted you while you were gone. We have somebody that's running your program. You are our new education director, staff education director.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly. Whether you said no or not, that's what they wanted to do.
MRS. ELLIOT: Well, they knew I was torn, they knew I enjoyed it, they knew I wanted to do it, so I think they decided and I don't know what they would have done if I'd said absolutely no.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MRS. ELLIOT: But it worked out beautifully. That was in 1994 and I retired last December with the same, doing the same thing. Was not at Overlook because Overlook and Peninsula merged and then all of it merged into the Covenant Health System.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. ELLIOT: So by the time I left, I was not just doing Overlook, I was doing behavioral education pretty much all over the Covenant system but I focused on Peninsula.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Now when did you move out -- we're in Oliver Springs here, so when did you move out of Oak Ridge to here?
MRS. ELLIOT: We moved here in 1973.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok. So you weren't in Oak Ridge a long time.
MRS. ELLIOT: No. We were there less than a year.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, yeah.
MRS. ELLIOT: When we moved here it was a week after I'd come out of the hospital with the radium implant. We ... Oh! That's another story. We closed on the house... I was in the hospital with the radium implant and, now when I had the radium implant, you have to lay flat on your back because you have, because of the way it was done. Was flat, couldn't sit up, couldn't get up and people could stand in my door for 10 minutes a day.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MRS. ELLIOT: So, for my husband to come visit me he could stand in the door for 10 minutes a day and that was it. My parents could each stand in the door 10 minutes a day. If the nurses that came in to attend me, they had to keep track of their time and they had to stay as far away as possible, they would have to kind of walk around the wall. And they had, now I'm flat on my back, can't raise the bed up. I could have a pillow and that was it. And I'm flat on my back and they would slide a tray in to me and I'm eating and drinking flat. It's quite interesting to brush your teeth in that position.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet. Or do everything else that you needed to do.
MRS. ELLIOT: Or do anything else. Of course, I was hooked up to tubes and stuff so I couldn't get up, there was no getting up to go to the bathroom, there was just no getting up.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MRS. ELLIOT: But anyway, during this time, we closed on the house and so the banker where we were getting the mortgage and my husband came over and they put the papers on the tray table and rolled it to me (laughs) and he watched me sign it.
MR. MCDANIEL: While you're in the... while you're on that treatment.
MRS. ELLIOT: While I'm there, so, we moved in. I had been out of the hospital, I don't know if it was a week or two weeks. I want to think maybe two weeks but I still wasn't allowed to do anything.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MRS. ELLIOT: And so my sister and brother-in-law came over and, but we were in a hurry to move.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, yeah.
MRS. ELLIOT: To get out of the little apartment and move, because growing up on a farm and then living in an apartment in Oak Ridge, we were ready to get out and have some space.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: So we had, at that time, a sleeper sofa, so my sister and brother-in-law came over and they slept on the sleeper sofa and did all of my moving because I was just not allowed to ... and even though I did, they fussed at me the whole time and then I started having a few little unusual symptoms and that curtailed it all, so I wound up sitting in a chair saying, put this there, put that there. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, but you... but your husband, you said, continued working at Y-12.
MRS. ELLIOT: Mmm-hmm.
MR. MCDANIEL: Until he retired.
MRS. ELLIOT: Mmm-hmm.
MR. MCDANIEL: When did he retire?
MRS. ELLIOT: He retired...he has been retired now it'll be two weeks -- two weeks, two years this... So he must have retired December of, well his official date probably was April of 2012, might have been 2011. Couple of years ago.
MR. MCDANIEL: Couple of years ago. But... But he worked at Y-12. In the... He was a machinist there, I guess.
MRS. ELLIOT: Mmm-hmm.
MR. MCDANIEL: For his career.
MRS. ELLIOT: Mmm-hmm.
MR. MCDANIEL: And y'all, really, ever since you came here you've lived in the area.
MRS. ELLIOT: We've been here.
MR. MCDANIEL: You didn't live in Oak Ridge, but you've been here, you've been in this whole general area. Where'd your kids go to high school? They go to Oliver Springs?
MRS. ELLIOT: They went to Clinton.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, they went to Clinton.
MRS. ELLIOT: They went to Clinton. They opted, of course, here in Norwood, we are in the Anderson County section.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: So Clinton was the logical place. All the other kids here in our neighborhood had gone to Clinton.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MRS. ELLIOT: And their friends were all going to Clinton so that's where they wanted to go, too. And it was a little bit tough, because I'm ... Jim's at Y-12 and it's not real easy to get in and out of there during the day and I'm in Harriman and so the first year that they went. At that time, Norwood Junior High went through ninth grade, so they didn't go... So there was one year that was a little sticky for me to get all the way from Harriman or him to get to them and then after that our daughter got her driver's license and she was able to drive.
MR. MCDANIEL: I've got one that'll be 16 in February and he's like, “Daddy, you just got to get me a car. That way you don't have to get me up, take me to school every morning,” and I'm like, I can take you to school for at least another little while, you know.
MRS. ELLIOT: Well, for us it was almost necessity.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I'm sure. Absolutely. So your life in the area sounds adventurous.
MRS. ELLIOT: We have... We have loved every minute of it. We have... We have four grandchildren. We have a, he'll be 23 in December, he's 22, be 23 in December, he is in Ireland right now studying... working on his Master's in mechanical engineering at the Dublin Institute of Technology. It's a program through Purdue University, so he's been accepted into Purdue's Master's program but the first year, he'll be in Dublin. He'll be in Dublin until January and then he'll be in Barcelona, Spain, until June.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, wow.
MRS. ELLIOT: So, we have him, we have a just-turned 20-year-old grandson who's playing football at the University of the Cumberlands so we're following the football team. And then we have an 18-year-old granddaughter who is a senior and then we have a two and a half year old who is at Oak Ridge Nursery School.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? Now where does your daughter live?
MRS. ELLIOT: My daughter lives in Clinton. Or our daughter lives in Clinton. Our son lives just about a mile down the road.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MRS. ELLIOT: Out on an old, called the Southern Farm.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. ELLIOT: It's been around for a long, long, long time and he lives there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. Well thank you so much for taking time to talk with us.
MRS. ELLIOT: Well, you are welcome. I have enjoyed every minute of it. You know, you don't like... You never hate talking about yourself. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Most people like to talk about themselves. I know I get accused of that all the time. (laughs) All right, well very good, Thank you very much.
MRS. ELLIOT: Thank you.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
[End of Interview]